While one of the more obscure
works in Simms’s canon, The Prima
Donna: A Passage from City Life, provides
an intriguing look into his relationship with the serial publishers who
published so much of his work. It is
also a noteworthy work for its content. Biographer
John C. Guilds finds that it reflects
Simms’s “interest in theater” and helps to demonstrate that the author “wrote
more effectively about drama than he
wrote drama itself.”[1]
A brief, 24-page fiction published as a standalone book by Louis A. Godey in
1844, The Prima Donna was originally
composed sometime ...